The Year of Original Content: How to Fight Back Against Abusers

I’ve declared this the Year of Original Content and I’m inviting you to help join the fight against those who abuse our content.

Scam, spam, splog, and scraper blogs are big business, taking in $3.2 billion dollars in 2007 just in the United States. Russia, China, Zimbabwe, and other countries are generating even more money with a variety of Internet scams. Many of these sites and blogs use our original content to generate that money, often from blogs that have no advertising nor direct income – making money from our hard work.

It’s time to fight back. It’s time to be proud that you are the unique voice in the wilderness. It’s time to honor your hard work and declare, “I decide who can and can’t take advantage of me!”

Here are some ways you can join the call to celebrate original content and fight back against those abusing our content without our permission.

Protest Loudly Against Spam Blogs to Those Who Host Them

Report specific scam, scraper, and spam blogs to those who host them. Blogging about it won’t change anything. Go to the sources and those who host them.

All free hosting services have policies for reporting fraud, abuse, and copyright violations, and some require being logged in to report spam and abuse. Protect yourself and others by finding out how to report abuse on your service.

Report Copyright Violations, Spam, and Scrapper Sites Properly

Don’t publicly shame or victimize content thieves. It doesn’t work. They are thrilled with the attention. By publicly shaming, harassing, or defaming a copyright violator, scam, scraper, or splogger, you run the risk of backfire as the laws against these have higher penalties and great risks.

If you publicly link to a spam, scam, splog, or other abusive blog, you are telling your readers to click the link and visit them. This increases the abuser’s traffic and may lead unsuspecting readers to a malicious site. Don’t risk endangering or exposing your readers to harmful sites, even if they appear only to be ripping off your content on the surface. You don’t know what may lie underneath the code, nor do you want to be responsible for someone buying or falling for their schemes, or help them make more money by your public spotlight.

Watch Your Trackbacks and Referrals

Include a minimum of one link to a post on your blog within every blog post you write. It can be as simple as your copyright policy at the bottom of every post, or an intrasite link to another post on your blog. If the post is grabbed by an aggregator, scraper, or auto-blogger, the trackback will appear in your Comments Panel.

Copyright law has been around for a long time, but the Internet is changing things. It is not changing the core intent of the law to protect the artists. Keep informed and educated on what is happening when it comes to the basic tenants of copyright law as well as the changes in online intellectual property.

Educate Readers

It is important that we all work together to educate each other, especially those of us who blog. We have a responsibility to educate our readers on international copyright laws, as well as on what our copyright policies are. Do you even have a copyright policy in place? Do your readers, listeners, and watchers know what it is?

Often, the first copyright violation you find is on the site is from an enthusiastic reader who just wanted to share your story with others. They probably forgot that just as copying and cheating in school was against the rules, so is using other people’s content, especially without proper citation, links, and beyond Copyright Fair Use restrictions. A calm and nice request will usually get a response and quick action.

We’ve got a lot of work to do to bring down the billion dollar industry abusing our content, so be nice to the naïve folks who don’t know any better and start educating your readers on how copyright works and what they can and cannot copy from your site.

Also, teach your readers to report to the violator and to you when they find your blog content used without your permission.

Report Content Theft When You Find It

If you spot someone’s content being ripped off, leave a comment on the scraper blog to let them know you know this isn’t the original source, and leave a link to the original for those who land on the site, to inform them that this isn’t the original content. This protects others from finding your original content on someone else’s site and reporting upon it as if it was theirs, not yours. If anyone is going to get the credit for the work, shouldn’t it be the original blogger?

When I confront copyright infringers, I ask them to remove all copyright violation content, not just mine, to remind them that I represent many, not just one. We have to speak out loud for everyone, not just ourselves.

Update and Publicize Your Copyright Policies

While it isn’t necessary, is your copyright statement on every blog post and in the footer of your blog? Does it link to your copyright policy?

Everything published on the web belongs to the copyright holder (the author, designer, creator). Your content can be free and available for anyone to use, or it can have restricted uses such as only with permission or restricted Fair Use policies? It’s up to you to decide how you want your content used, and your responsibility to inform people of that decision.

Report Scams, Scrapers, Spams, and Phishing to the Proper Authorities

By reporting scams, spams, and phishing blogs to government officials, those in power to do something on a local, national, or international level, you help everyone caught by these abusers. These sites are not for reporting copyright violations, but reporting on malicious and serious spam and scam sites.

Few spammers and scrapers run only one spam site. They tend to have many – sometimes thousands. It’s big business and big money and it takes more than a DMCA notice to get them to remove your content. And it’s not just your content that’s being ripped off and abused. It’s often the content of thousands of other bloggers.

Many say, “Who cares. I don’t have time for this.” That is what keeps these criminals in business. The apathy. Care. Care a lot. It takes many voices, not one, to shut these sites down. Join the chorus.

Make the Time

I confront 5-20 copyright infringers weekly. It takes about 15-30 minutes spread across seven days. That’s an average of about four minutes a day at most. Time to wash your face and brush your teeth.

Remember that when you are requesting the editing or removal of your blog content, you are speaking for others. They could have asked first, and they didn’t. They just took. Make the time to make it right – for you and your fellow bloggers.

@Miroslav: My personal copyright policy says that you can use only a portion of my post content, not the whole thing, within a very strict Fair Use policy. As for the Blog Herald, you are right that their Policies page does not include copyright. I thought it did. Clearly, it’s time for them to update that page. :D

As for those who continue to copy my post content, they have been reported and we’re waiting for their site to be penalized. Some times it takes a very long time, other times, seconds.

Ajay D’Souza from WLTC got his article copied to that site I e-mailed you before.
I noticed your Lorelle signature only appears on your WP site and I have not seen you use it outside it. Is it your policy to only use the Lorelle signature on your WP site?

I e-mailed Ajay about the copying.
I have e-mailed you in the past.

So the process of getting things taken down are to first notify the site, then their webhost/registrar then what else? Let’s say what if John Doe from johndoe.com copies your work, you msg John Doe and he doesn’t want to do a thing, you contact the webhost/domain registrar for johndoe.com and they don’t want to do a thing?

Is there a way to add a message to the bottom of the RSS feeds saying “This article is from published at and if you are reading this somewhere else then it has been stolen”.

@Miroslav: I really appreciate the work you and so many do to help keep me on my toes when it comes to tracking down copyright infringements. As explained in What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content, you first notify the abuser with a comment or email, staying neutral but clear. If that gets no response, you take the next steps to contact the web host, then search engines, advertisers, etc., in accordance with the DMCA and international copyright laws. At the very worst, you take legal action, but as I said, that’s actually rare.

There are many WordPress Plugins and scripts you can use to include “hidden” text that only appears in feeds, not posts. Many just put a note in their blog posts manually that states something like: “If this content is found on any site other than X, it is in violation of our copyright policy. Please notify us.” Feeds are much abused, and Jonathan Bailey has written much on how to use and control your feeds to protect your copyright. I’ll let him chime in. :D

Do note, that even posting a note and/or copyright policy does not stop content theft. It merely servers as a reminder that everything published belongs to the original author. What they choose to do with the content, and allow use thereof, is up to them, not the reader or user of the content.